Adobe Lightroom CC

Adobe is targeting the consumer photo audience with a complete redesign of its Lightroom professional photo workflow program. It's slick and nimble, but pros will want more power, and amateurs may balk at the price.

Cons

Bottom Line

Lightroom is going after the consumer photo audience with this complete redesign of the pro photo workflow tool.
It's slick and nimble, but pros will want more power, and amateurs may balk at the price.

May 1, 2018Michael Muchmore

Adobe's Lightroom photo software has long been a favorite among professional photographers. Now the company wants to broaden the program's user base by splitting it into two: Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC. The first (the subject of this review) is designed for consumers who want to access their photos online, along with a modicum of powerful editing and organizing tools. Meanwhile, Lightroom Classic retains Lightroom's traditional interface and toolset. Lightroom CC includes a full terabyte of online syncing and storage in its subscription price. Unfortunately, the new program still lacks some basic capabilities (like printing). Veteran users will likely want to stick with Lightroom Classic, at least for now.

Adobe recently updated both Lightrooms (along with the mobile versions and the Camera Raw utility) with the beefed up Profile feature. Profiles are used to determine how to convert raw camera files into viewable images, and determine the starting point of your editing journey. Some new creative Profiles that are very similar to Instagram filters join the Raw Profiles, and those can be used on JPGs as well as raw images.

Pricing and Setup

You now have three options when buying Lightroom. The Lightroom CC plan runs $9.99 per month and includes that 1TB of online storage, but with that plan you don't get Photoshop CC. The Photography plan, also $9.99 per month, gets you both Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC, along with Lightroom Classic, but it only includes 20GB of cloud storage. It costs an additional $10 per month to get that package with 1TB of storage. And finally, of course, you get all three programs with a full, $49.99-per-month Creative Cloud subscription, though that only comes with 100GB of cloud storage (upgradeable to 1TB for an additional $9.99 per month).

For comparison, you get 1TB free online photo storage for free from Flickr. A terabyte of OneDrive storage costs about half a Lightroom CC subscription, at $69.99 per year, and that includes photo syncing, along with all the Office apps. For the same $9.99 per month, Apple's iCloud gives you 2TB—twice as much as Adobe. Google charges the same $9.99 for 1TB as Adobe does, but if you don't mind saving compressed versions of your photos, you can upload everything for free. If you just want photo software without the cloud storage and syncing, you can get Adobe Photoshop Elements for $99, or Corel PaintShop Pro for $79.99—both as one-time purchases.

Creative Cloud subscribers with the eponymous utility installed now see two Lightroom choices: Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC. Installing is a simple matter of tapping Install in the Creative Cloud utility. The new program takes up 1.2GB on my hard drive, half a gigabyte less than Lightroom Classic.

The Lightroom CC Interface

The new Lightroom sports a refreshing, clean interface. It features what Adobe product manager Tom Hogarty calls "progressive disclosure," meaning it starts out simple and then reveals increasingly complex tools as you need them. On first run, you see the Lightroom CC splash screen, and then the window starts filling with a tile view of all the photos on your system. You can switch that to a contact-sheet view and sort by import date, capture date, or modified date.

With this radical rethinking of Lightroom, Adobe ditches the Modes of its predecessor: Library, Develop, and the rest. Aside from the rows of your synced photos, the new interface is notably sparse: Organizing and adjustment tools are hidden behind box and control slider icons, at the left and right edges, respectively. I find it a little annoying, however, that you can't display the organization panel and adjustment panel at the same time: When you open one, the other closes. Thankfully, you can change this behavior in Preferences by switching the panels from Automatic to Manual.

Double-clicking on a thumbnail in the tile view opens a photo in full view, and double-tapping again takes you back to gallery view. Tapping the full photo view (the cursor appears as a plus sign) enlarges the image to 100 percent. After this, the cursor changes to a hand, letting you drag the image around. At bottom right, there are also Fit, Fill, and 1:1 choices. There's also a Show Original button, but no side-by-side before-and-after view such as you get in Lightroom Classic. You can use the mouse wheel while holding down Ctrl to zoom in and out, but you don't get a zoom slider showing you the percent, as you do in CyberLink PhotoDirector.

As for touch input, Lightroom CC is adequate: You can pretty easily use its buttons and controls via touch, and you can tap or unpinch a photo to zoom it to the last level. Lightroom Classic features a full touch mode for tablets and touch-screen PCs such as the Surface Book.

Importing Images

Neither Lightroom CC nor Classic pops up as an Auto-Play option when you insert an SD memory card. I like to have a big Import button always handy, but with CC you have to press the + button and then choose the source folder or card. When you import pictures from a camera card, you see a grid of all the card's images, but, unlike previous versions of Lightroom, this iteration doesn't let you view a photo at full size before importing it.

When you import, all the images are automatically and immediately backed up to Adobe's servers. Hands-off people will probably appreciate this, but I'd prefer more control over what's uploaded. You can pause uploading, but you can't specify folders and files you don't want uploaded. For the ability to exclude images from uploading to the cloud, look to Lightroom Classic.

The import process is one of the pain points of Lightroom: Many have complained about how slow it is on photo forums and blogs. I personally also hate wasting upload time and storage space with images I may not want to save. Professionals with loads of RAID storage probably want everything imported, but they want it to happen fast. To be fair, importing is faster in the new Lightroom (and even in the recently updated Classic).

I tested import performance with 235 7MB images from a FujiFilm X-A3 camera. Lightroom CC took 2:52 (minutes:seconds) for the import, and Lightroom Classic took 4:12, though that included converting some images to DNG. Building previews took Classic yet another 46 seconds, though I could start editing before that step completed. In any case, Lightroom CC is faster at importing.

Raw Profiles

If you really want to get the most editing potential out of your digital camera, you'll import raw camera files. When you import raw files, the software translates raw data from the camera sensor into a viewable image, using a rendering Profile. The biggest update of 2018 so far for Lightroom CC (as well as for Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera Raw) is new Profile choices.

The Profile option actually already existed in Lightroom and Camera Raw, but it was way down in the Camera Calibration section and only offered a few basic choices, most of which were based on your camera manufacturer's software. Now, they're at the top of the Edit adjustment panel, and reflect more Adobe color technology than that of the camera maker. It's important because it's the starting point for any other editing you do, so it makes sense to put the option at the top.

In my recent pro photo software reviews, I've mentioned that Capture One has done a superior job of initial raw conversion—that pictures look better right after you import them and before you make adjustments. Phase One's software brought out more detail and color than Adobe's blander Standard Profile. The new Profiles in Lightroom CC go a long way towards rectifying this.

The new Profiles come in two main groups: raw and creative. Choices in the first group are Adobe Raw and Camera Matching, while Creative options include Legacy, Artistic, B&W, Modern, and Vintage. The raw Profiles only work with raw images, while the last four are special effects that also work with JPG images. The Browse option shows square thumbnails of each profile, which you can hover over with the mouse to preview them on the main image window. You can also choose Favorite Profiles to appear in the top group of thumbnails.

Included in the Adobe Raw group are Adobe Color, Monochrome, Landscape, Neutral, Portrait, Standard, and Vivid. I expect Adobe Color to be the most popular, and it's the new default for newly imported photos. It gets a bit more contrast, warmth, and vividness out of the photo than Adobe Standard, which is the same as the previous version of Lightroom. For some test shots, particularly in color portraits I now actually prefer Lightroom's initial rendering to Capture One's, especially when using the Portrait and Landscape Profiles appropriately. Note that any photos you've already imported will retain the legacy Adobe Standard Profile, which usually yields a less pleasing result than the new Profiles.

The Camera Matching Profiles simply mimic the camera manufacturer's image rendering. They're designed to match what you see on your camera LCD or the JPG the camera produces. I found the latter less pleasing than the Adobe Profiles. They were either too cool or oversaturated for a Canon 1Ds portrait.

The Monochrome Profile, because it starts from the raw camera image, is a better option than starting with a color Profile and then converting to black-and-white. Portrait is designed to reproduce all skin tones accurately, while Landscape adds more vibrancy since there's no face tones to worry about distorting. Neutral has the least contrast, useful for difficult lighting situations, and Vivid punches up saturation and contrast.

The Creative Profiles will conjure the notion of Instagram filters for many. Disappointingly, they have names like Artistic 01, Modern 04, and so on. I'd prefer names that give a clue about what the effect does rather than numbers. Every Instagram user knows what the Hefe filter looks like (it's one of my faves). Despite that quibble, the Creative Profiles really do add interest and feels, usually without being too obvious. In some cases they're a one-step improvement. It's also impressive how different the 17 B&W choices are.

Organizing Photos

The search bar in Lightroom CC uses AI to let you find particular objects—dogs, mountains, buildings, and more. I do like the filter option that lets you select camera models, keywords, and locations, but Lightroom Classic goes way beyond that letting you filter by lens or F-stop, as well. As for the AI object search, that's already available in Flickr, Microsoft Photos , Google Photos, Apple Photos, and Adobe Photoshop Elements, so at this point it's not a differentiator. My favorite implementation of this is that of Flickr, since it actually shows you the automatically generated object keyword tags—which all its competitors hide—and even lets you edit them.

You can also organize your collection with albums, star ratings, and Pick and Reject flags. You don't get color labels, as you do with ACDSee Pro and CyberLink PhotoDirector. Nor do you get Smart Collections like those that Lightroom Classic can create, based on dates and tags. You can, however, add keywords, though the entry system doesn't have Lightroom Classic's hierarchical keyword suggestions.

Adjusting Images

Nobody likes to admit that they use the Auto button to see if the program can improve their photos automatically, but everyone uses it—if only to see what the program recommends. I like that the button in Lightroom CC is easier to find, and that it shows you exactly which sliders it's adjusted (old Lightroom did that, too). In my testing, it was good at fixing underexposed photos, but it often overly brightened a photo that was already bright—even when searched using the term "bright" it would further brighten the photo that another part of the app had deemed bright. To be fair, a snowfield test shot with hazy mountains was nicely dehazed and not brightened.

You still get all the trusty lighting adjustment sliders: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks. Lifesavers Clarity and Vibrance are also still in Lightroom CC. Curve adjustment has made its way into the latest update. You can no longer use the mouse wheel to increase and decrease the slider positions, which is something I liked to do, and there's no history panel showing all your changes. I do like that double-clicking a slider returns it to its original position. The Revert to original button is hidden under the … menu; I'd rather have it always available.

As with nearly all photo apps these days, Lightroom CC lets you apply filter effects, via the Presets button at the bottom of the window. You get a good selection of color, black and white, grain, and vignette preset adjustments, and you can see the effects applied to your as you hover the mouse cursor over each. But Photoshop Elements offers more options with its filters.

Cropping is well implemented, with a good choice of preset aspect ratios, and there's even an Auto-leveling option.

A Healing Brush, an Adjustment Brush, and Linear and Radial Gradients tools are happily available, in pretty much the same form as those in Lightroom Classic.

Thankfully, you do still get noise reduction in CC, and it works well, as does the automatic chromatic aberration correction. Those are a couple of tools you don't get with the free consumer apps. Another more advanced tool that you get in CC but not in free photo apps is its Geometry distortion correction based on lens profiles. These are good signs, and hopefully they're an indication of things to come for Lightroom CC.

Sharing and Output

When I tapped the up-arrow to share the current photo, Facebook was my only option, aside from saving to disk. Twitter, Instagram, and others are all MIA, here. And there's no right-click option to email the current photo, either. If Adobe had decided to make a modern UWP Windows Store app, you'd be able to share to Dropbox, Instagram, Skype, Twitter, Messenger, and any other photo-related app installed on your PC. In fact, the free Photos app that comes with Windows lets you share to any of those.

A simple Facebook authorization lets you share a photo directly from the app; you can add a caption and choose which Facebook album to add it to, but you can't set privacy settings or send it in a Facebook Messenger message.

The only other output option is to save the file to disk, and you can only save as JPG or the original file type—you can't convert to a file type of your choice, as you can in Corel PaintShop Pro. So, if you need a TIFF, or even a PNG, look elsewhere. Ditto for watermarking.

Mobile App and Website

As a mobile app, Lightroom CC is more impressive than its desktop counterpart. In fact, it even boasts the new Profiles feature, along with a slider control for the Upright, Guided Upright, and Geometry tools.

All the same photos you see synced in the desktop app also appear in the mobile app, and you even get the gradient and brush selective editing. The chromatic aberration correction is AWOL, but you do get noise reduction.

You can set the app to automatically upload anything shot on the phone to your Lightroom cloud storage, and you can search, filter, and tag your photos. In addition to all those post-shot options, you can use the in-app camera, which boasts exposure compensation with a simple swipe, and a White Balance tool. It also has an HDR feature that saves the result as a raw file. In all, it's a great mobile photo app. It's available for both Android and iOS.

Lightroom's web galleries, annoyingly not found at lightroom.com but rather at lightroom.adobe.com, bear a strong resemblance to the new Lightroom CC application. In fact, the left organization panel shows the same list of albums, but it's Add Photos option is in a different place, above the photo collection. You can also create new albums in the web interface. If you share a photo, you can choose a layout and get a single URL to share an album publicly. A dashboard shows you your recent albums, imports by month, and stats like how many photos, albums, and videos you've added.

You also get online editing, including the Light, Color, and Effects tools. You don't, however, get the Detail, Optics, or Geometry corrections. There are a couple Technology Previews you can opt into, such as Auto Tone and Best Photos, which uses AI to detect your photos with the best lighting and composition. Other differences between the installed and web versions include controls on the latter not working well with touch, the very slow loading of editing tools, and a lack of before-and-after viewing.

What's Missing From Lightroom CC?

As you will have gathered by now, Lightroom CC is missing some key capabilities. I've already mentioned the inability to control what's synced and the lack of printing, file conversion, color label organization, and sharing options. But there's more: There's no plug-in support, you can't view EXIF or IPTC data, and there are no slideshow creation, photobook layout, or web output options. There are also a few things missing that you even find in the consumer competition from Apple, Google, and Microsoft, including face recognition, basic video editing (though you can import and play video), and automatic gallery creation.

Lightroom Lite

With this radical redesign of Lightroom, Adobe is going after the Apple Photos/Google Photos/Microsoft Photos audience. Sure, some professional and serious amateur photographers may dig the slick new modeless workflow, and very enthusiastic enthusiasts will want to kick its tires, since there are indeed some nice capabilities. But we suspect many will miss the deeper Lightroom feature set, and it seems unlikely that consumers will want to pay $120 per year for what they can get most of free or inexpensively from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Pro photographers should stick with Lightroom Classic, our Editors' Choice for photo workflow software. Enthusiasts are better served by Adobe Photoshop Elements, our Editors' Choice for consumer photo software, as well as by Apple Photos, Google Photos, or Microsoft's included Photos app in Windows 10.

Adobe Lightroom CC

Bottom Line: Adobe is targeting the consumer photo audience with a complete redesign of its Lightroom professional photo workflow program. It's slick and nimble, but pros will want more power, and amateurs may balk at the price.

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About the Author

Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine’s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine’s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of Web Services (pretty much the progenitor of Web 2.0) for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine’s Solutions section, which in those days covered programming techniques as well as tips on using popular office software. Most recently he covered Web 2.0 and other software for ExtremeTech.com.

Michael got his start in computing as a lad, when he wrote a BASIC program for a Radio Shack ... See Full Bio